Sharon Kozicki joined the central bank in 2006 and has been an adviser to the governor and secretary to the governing council since 2013.BANK OF CANADA/Handout
The Bank of Canada has appointed long-time central banker Sharon Kozicki to the position of deputy governor – the second change to the bank’s governing council this month.
Ms. Kozicki, an adviser to governor Tiff Macklem and his predecessor Stephen Poloz, will join the bank’s top decision-making body on Aug. 2.
Just last week, Carolyn Rogers was appointed senior deputy governor, the No. 2 position at the bank.
The two changes will “temporarily” bring the number of governing council members to seven, once Ms. Rogers officially starts in December, the bank said. The council typically has six members, suggesting a retirement may be imminent.
“This will allow for a broader diversity of views and analysis and will allow for smooth succession in the event of future retirements,” the bank said in a statement.
Ms. Kozicki joined the central bank in 2006 and has been an adviser to the governor and secretary to the governing council since 2013. In this role, she oversaw the production of the quarterly Monetary Policy Report, outlining the bank’s economic forecast, and led the 2016 review of different monetary policy frameworks as part of the bank’s five-year mandate review.
“The bank has long benefitted from Sharon’s thought leadership on monetary policy design, implementation and communication,” Mr. Macklem said in a statement.
Ms. Kozicki had long been tipped to join the bank’s governing council and was seen as a leading contender to replace senior deputy governor Carolyn Wilkins when she left that job in December. Like Ms. Kozicki, Ms. Wilkins held the position of adviser to the governor and secretary to the council before her appointment to the No. 2 job in 2014.
Instead, that position went to Ms. Rogers, a bank outsider with a background in financial regulation rather than economics. Ms. Rogers is currently the secretary-general of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, which co-ordinates global financial regulation, and was previously an assistant superintendent of Canada’s banking regulator, the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions.
“It’s interesting that they brought in yet another outsider to fill in a very senior role for the senior deputy governor, so in a way [Ms. Kozicki’s] promotion from within the ranks is maybe a signal to the rest of the bank that they’re still promoting people from within,” Bank of Montreal chief economist Douglas Porter said in an interview.
“You need a mix of continuity, sprinkled with some new, outside opinions and views from time to time.”
Mr. Porter said Ms. Kozicki will likely become one of the council’s leading experts on the Canadian and U.S. economies.
Before becoming an adviser to the governor in 2013, Ms. Kozicki, who holds a PhD in economics from the University of California San Diego, worked as managing director of the central bank’s Canadian economic analysis department and deputy director of the international economic analysis department. Before joining the bank, she was an economist with the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, and vice-president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
“It’s a good hire. If anything surprises me, it’s that she wasn’t already deputy governor,” Mr. Porter said.
Ms. Kozicki will help oversee the bank’s financial system activities until Ms. Rogers starts her new job in December. The bank declined to make Ms. Kozicki available for an interview.
The back-to-back appointments of Ms. Rogers and Ms. Kozicki significantly increase diversity on the board of governors. Since Ms. Wilkins’s departure, the governing council has been entirely male.
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Mark Rendell